


Safety and Peace

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dubious Consent, F/M, Graphic descriptions of violence, Imprisonment, M/M, Omega Verse, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:34:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At fifteen, Altair-and-Malik had grown lean and strong.  They had built a friendship cradled softly between blood and respect.  The whole world lay before them, and they were primed to take whatever-they-wanted and do-what-they pleased.  </p>
<p>	At sunset, out in the wild dirt beyond the safe walls of a close city, Altair said (into the fading light): “promise you’ll kill me if I turn Omega.” </p>
<p>	“Promise me the same,” Malik said.  And Altair promised him, with the last slant of sunlight falling across his pale face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i clearly cannot be allowed to write any more omega'verse stories.

They met as children, filthy with blood.

\--

There were places in the world (so said the weary travelers) that were ripe with Omegas, full to brimming with men-and-women that could give birth. In these places, Omegas were _nothing_ , hardly even worthy of note. There were no battles fought, no laws passed, no need to cage Omegas and force them to buy their freedom with a litter of squalling children. That strange world sounded infinitely preferable to the unenviable reality of their lives.

\--

At fifteen, Altair-and-Malik had grown lean and strong. They had built a friendship cradled softly between blood and respect. The whole world lay before them, and they were primed to take whatever-they-wanted and do-what-they pleased. 

At sunset, out in the wild dirt beyond the safe walls of a close city, Altair said (into the fading light): “promise you’ll kill me if I turn Omega.” 

“Promise me the same,” Malik said. And Altair promised him, with the last slant of sunlight falling across his pale face.

\--

The penalty for lying was whipping; the penalty conspiracy to conceal was death. Malik did not lie because he simply told nobody that he had ever become anything but the very same sort of person he had been in all the years of his life before he suddenly presented as an Omega. Nobody asked him and he, therefore, persisted in selective ignorance (save for the few brief times out of the year were he could not ignore his body’s insistence). 

Kadar discovered him disposing of the blood evidence of his own wretched body. The silence between them stretched thin-and-wide, so that Malik’s weary nerves tightened down into a killing stance. For one-brief-crystalline moment Malik thought he was capable of _anything_ but letting his brother escape with the knowledge he’d just discovered.

“I won’t tell,” Kadar said to him in a hushed-tone-whisper. “I saw nothing.”

\--

Altair inherited his father’s wealth and his station within in the city. The boy that had raced across rooftops and hunted thieves and rapists with him was lost to a myriad of troublesome duties. There was no time for games or revelry, no joy in the pursuit or capture of criminals. Altair went stale with disuse, slowly-but-sure brainwashed into an obedient boy by men with long titles.

Malik hunted with his brother, picked through the refuse of the city and disposed of their miserable and unworthy bodies beyond the walls. 

\--

The secret kept for two years, until men with armor and shackles showed at his door demanding admittance. They held him fast to the ground and found his brother half-asleep in the mid-afternoon heat. Kadar was wide-eyed and pale with shock when they threw him to the floor. His hands were raised up in submission when they drove the sword through his back and the very last thing that Kadar must have heard was Malik’s desperate screams and merciless way he was dragged out through the broken door.

\--

Omegas were _owned_ , sold to reputable buyers who offered qualities that promoted the superior breeding. Contracts were signed and quotas decided upon at the time of the sale—most families wanted at least two children in exchange for the freedom of the Omega they purchased but some were known to settle for one. Then the Omega was turned out to the streets where they found other families to take them in, other children to birth-and-abandon before they died young-and-used. Few of them settled into anonymity among the poor, hidden save for the inevitable arrival of miserably hungry-and-poor children.

Malik’s second life started in a cage, shackled to the floor while men with money stared at him and decided how much they’d be willing to pay for him. 

\--

The deal was made behind the thick walls of the prison where he was kept. The terms were settled and read to him as he sat with his back to the poor idiot that had been selected to read his execution orders. 

“One child in three years and you will be released, your debt considered fulfilled,” was the final summation. The man fled with a rustle of paper and the quiet-but-terrified footsteps of limited intelligence.

Malik did not make unreasonable bargains with himself. He did not attempt to console himself in his captivity. The fact remained the same in that moment as he it had remained when he first discovered himself as Omega—he would not give his body to any man. He would not be a bitch in a kennel, willing and ready to be bred for the good of others. Here-and-now when he was bought-and-sold, he would fight until his teeth were bloody with effort and there was no choice but to put him down like a feral beast.

\--

It was not a well-kept secret that Malik hunted-and-killed men for sport and pocket change. The men with long titles had made use of him before, they knew as well as the miserable officials knew he was willing-and-able to kill men that deserved it. When they moved him from his cell they shackled his hands at his back and covered his head with a dark sack. 

So he went through the city, pulled on by a rope at his neck: tripping over, stepping on things that men who could see did not bother to warn him about. On and on until the sounds of the living people faded to a calm lull and his home among the wealthy-and-powerful overtook him like a white spot. It was devoid of anything familiar as he shuffled across the smooth ground and was urged through an open doorway.

A metal door opened and he was pushed through it. A door slammed as his body was yanked by that rope at his neck back against the bars of his new home. An industrious type of man tied him in place by the choke collar cutting into his throat as another released one shackle from his wrist and put a new cuff in its place. 

Malik could hear the rattle of the chain they locked onto his right wrist. He screamed at them, kicking and screaming until the rope tightened so hard he couldn’t breathe and his vision went all spots.

The door opened, closed and there was a sawing sound of a knife against rope before Malik fell forward onto his hands and knees. 

\--

The room his cage had been built in was a decent size. It was bare now, removed of anything else it might have once been and left as nothing more than a larger cage to house the smaller one he was meant to live in. 

His cage was made of metal bars, long enough to pace in, tall enough to stand in and covered from one end to another in carpets and cushions. He had been furnished with a pile of food, a tall pitcher of water and a selection of simple books. 

Malik sat on the cushions, rigid with anticipation, while he waited for his new _owner_ to show his cowardly face. But the sun that slanted in through the high-tight little window faded away to darkness and still his captor did not come. 

\--

It was morning again, Malik was well-rested (against his will) and well-fed (by a blushing, silent servant who pushed the plate of food with a foot and ran for her life as fast as she could manage). Boredom had set in during the first hour of wakefulness, so he pulled himself up with the top bars of his cage. The simplicity of moving made tolerating the unknown easier.

The footsteps on the stairs did not have the decency to be hesitant. They came with brisk authority as Malik dropped to his own feet on the luxurious carpets he had been given. His bare shoulders were squared against the inevitable. “I should be insulted you could not be bothered to show your face yesterday.”

At-last the footsteps paused, just around the doorway to his room and he imagined the spoiled rich thing must have questioned their own wisdom. It was a powerful thought that made his lips turn up in a cruel-smile. He would greet his fate with the same hatred that it had always afforded him.

Oh-and-when his new master finally stepped into the room, he was not wearing the twisted mask of an unknown thing. There was no fear in his face, no moment of hesitation that made his motions sluggish and unsure. No, this wasn’t a rich merchant’s son, this was not the distant relative of royalty that had rushed to buy a chance at the immortality offered by a child. 

This was something like _hope_ that burst in Malik’s chest with such bright heat that he could not contain the tremor that ran through his body. He had not seen Altair so close to him in a matter of years. They had fallen into their separate roles: Altair as one of the wealthy, worthy sons and Malik as an accidental bit of trash birthed by an Omega that sold its body for food and basic shelter. But Malik _knew_ Altair, better than he had known any other man (save his brother). Altair would not let him persist in this life. “If you’ve come to fulfill your promise, release me from this cage first. I have no desire to die a captive animal.”

Altair stopped just out of reach. His shoulders rose with a sigh that filled the air around them with _dread_. The smile that had been forming on his face flattened to his usual grim-frown as the familiar-joy in his eyes went stale. Malik looked at him then, the hidden strength of his body beneath the fine clothes he wore. The pale softness of his face from a life lived indoors. “Malik,” he said.

“No!” Malik screamed. (The way he’d screamed at his brother’s blood spilling across the floor, the way he’d screamed at his own body when it twisted up and turned out wrong. The way he’d screamed in the first days of his confinement.) He grabbed the bars, heard his shackle clank against the metal like the rattling in his head. He was trying to shake the bars but they stood impassive to his attempts. He stuck his left arm through the cage, fingers curling through the cool air just short of the neck he so wished he could crush in his hands. “You promised! You promised me that you would kill me! You miserable bastard, you have to keep your promise!”

Altair looked at him, right at his face and not at the pathetic, short reach of his arm sticking out of a cage. “I’m sorry about your brother, Malik. I took care of his funeral for you.” His low voice was an insult against the frantic spitting-screams that tore through Malik’s chest.

“Fuck you!” Malik snapped at him. He shoved himself away from the bars, kicked at them with his bare feet carelessly. His head was swimming in-and-out of focus, his body was just vibrating out of control and nothing-in-the-world-made-sense anymore. He was shaking his head and he couldn’t even swear he understood why. 

“I had expected a different reaction,” Altair said. His voice was as it had been in the long years of their childhood: deep, indifferent, unaffected. Malik had made a living out of hunting men that deserved to die but they had never shook in fear of _him_ the way they had of Altair. 

Malik turned back around and spit at him through the bars. “What should my reaction be? What would please you, oh exalted master? Should I crawl to you on my grateful knees and beg for you? Should I shout in joy of your skills like the whore you _obviously think I am_?” He yanked at his clothes to bare his shoulder and part of his chest but Altair did not look away from his face. 

“I saved your life,” Altair said. Oh-but-he didn’t sound like he could even convince himself of that truth. “The council had almost decided that you weren’t worthy of being bred. Not many Omegas are considered so basically uselessly to be killed before they are bred. You should be proud that you are so fundamentally unlikeable.”

“You weren’t supposed to _save my life_. You were supposed to end it!” Malik snapped.

“I know, but I can’t.” Altair said. “I figured, you would have forced their hand in the end, and your public execution would have been a fine spectacle. That might have made you happy—but I couldn’t allow it. There were few bids, mostly desperate old men who had no hope of…taming you. It was an easy win.”

It was a greater insult than Malik could make sense of. He stood there dumbly as Altair watched him. 

“Don’t terrorize your servant,” Altair said, “it was hard enough to find someone willing to bring your food in the first place. Imagine how difficult it would be if I had to replace her.” Then he turned around to leave and Malik grabbed one of the books in his cage and threw it at Altair’s retreating back. 

\--

For a long time, Malik sat with his back against the bars and his hands against the carpet beneath him. For a very long time, he thought of nothing at all: not of his brother, not of the promises that had been broken, not of the life that he now faced, and not of the bars that held him in place.

When night came, he slept. When morning came, he sat. And on-and-on.  
\--

“We met over a corpse,” Altair said. He came with the rise of the sun, snuck into the room when it was still dark and crouched against the short wall by the door. His fine-clothes were out of place in the dreary nothingness of Malik’s captivity. “It was your mother. I didn’t know that for a very long time. I remember how they had broken her neck, how her clothes had been torn and his body had been slashed apart again and again. You never claimed her, you never cried, you never even cared. Are Omegas worth so very little to you?”

“She was not my Mother, she was simply the Omega that gave birth to me. My Mother ran an inn with my father until they died.” Malik was lying still, exhausted from hunger and a gray blanket of nothingness that felt like it would crush him if only given enough time. 

“If he was not your mother, how was Kadar your brother?” Altair asked. “He was the son of a different family—wholly removed from yours. But you claimed him as yours. Either the Omega was your Mother or she wasn’t.”

Malik rolled away from Altair, turned his back to him and the dim memories he was stirring. 

But Altair’s voice was quiet-and-bloody when he said, “I remember what we did when we found her killers. I remember the way you screamed when you cut them, and how their blood covered the floor like a great flood. I remember the glassy stare of their eyes, the way their skin went cold. I remember how their bodies felt when I drove my knife through the soft places between their ribs.” He was moving somewhere beyond the bars. “It is memories of you that makes my life bearable. I cannot help the circumstances that brought you here anymore than I can help the ones that brought me here.”

Malik-said-nothing.

\--

“Please eat,” his servant said as she pushed his food through the bars so it sat close enough to his face he could have just leaned forward and taken it in his mouth. She was so-very-young with a curl of dark hair around her face and tears in her eyes. “Please,” she said again. Her fingers were hovering just above his mouth now, offering him the bits of food. 

\--

Altair came again, somewhere in the middle of the night. He was dressed in only pants that slid around his legs as he walked. Malik watched him from the dent he’d worn in the cushions he was given to sleep on. Altair opened the door with a key that he tossed across the room before he slammed it behind him. The lock clicked into place like the slow fall of an executioner’s sword. 

“Come to take what’s yours at last?” Malik asked. He couldn’t have fought Altair now even if he wanted to. The strange thing wasn’t the oddly comforting grip of the knowledge but the numb lack of fear and anger that it would finally happen. 

“You flatter yourself,” Altair said. His words were counterpoint to the grip of his strong-broad hands as they rolled Malik onto his back and propped him up against the cushions. His body was too warm and too heavy when it settled into his lap and his eyes were too bright even in the dimness of the room. Altair held him in place with one hand on his chest and reached across the distance to where the pile of plates stood with uneaten food gone-cold in piles. 

“I’ll bite your fingers off if you put that in my mouth,” Malik said. But his threat was hollow the way his voice was shallow and his lips had started to crack and peel when he stopped drinking water days ago. The bitter taste of starvation had faded from the back of his throat the way his growling stomach had fallen to silence. 

Altair’s hand grabbed his jaw and the pressure there made Malik’s mouth open. Rough-long fingers shoved food into his mouth beyond his teeth and then Altair’s palm covered his lips, his other hand slid around the back of his head to hold him in place. Malik was left with the uncomfortable cold-lump of food in his jaws. “I was seven,” Altair said, “I had run away from home because I hated these cold walls and the man that my father was. My mother had died, the Omega that birthed me was dead. I spent six days in the street—lost and hungry. I thought I was going to die. I found you crouching over the body of an Omega and you said: ‘there’s always a way to survive if you want it enough’. You taught me to beg for food, you taught me to climb the walls of the city, you showed me how to run on the rooftops and how to defend myself.”

Malik’s throat was working against the weight of the food caught on his tongue. Altair forced his head back as tears formed in Malik’s eyes from the awkward-angle-instinctual rejection of the unwanted obstruction dropping back against his throat.

“I was fourteen,” Altair said in a hiss as his fingers dug so hard into Malik’s skin they had to leave marks behind, “when six men caught me and dragged me back to their filthy hovel. They said I was too pretty, they stuck their fingers in my mouth, they tried to take my clothes off as they made deals about who would fuck me first. They tied me with ropes, they hit me when I fought—I thought of you, I thought of what you said to me. I slithered out of their ropes, I cut them until their bodies were _ribbons_. You can think whatever foul thing you want of me, Malik. You can call me a liar if you like. I made a promise to you that I cannot keep but I will _never_ rape you. And I won’t let you die.”

Malik hit him. Slapped uselessly at his arms and his chest until the effort exhausted him and he had to swallow the food in his mouth or die from the startling-white-spots of suffocation. His body chose to live over his own desire to die and the food went down his ragged throat like salt water across wounds. 

Altair released him, sat back against his thighs while Malik coughed uselessly. “Will you eat or will I have to shove this down your throat piece by piece?”

“The next time you come, I will kill you,” Malik said. 

Altair picked up another scoop of the food off the plate and shoved it into his mouth even as Malik tried to shove him back. So it-went-again-and-again until the food was greasy smears across Malik’s face and an unwelcome weight in his gut. He was sick-from-it before Altair relented and released him to go fetch water. His grip was no less firm and no less painful when he pried Malik’s mouth open to poor the water in. 

Malik slept. When he woke, Altair was at the opposite end of the cage with his back rigid and his legs crossed in front of him. The sunlight caught on his pale skin and bloomed around him like an ethereal glow. “You did not tell me about those men before,” Malik said. “Why should I believe it now when it’s a convenient lie?”

“You have such contempt for Omegas, Malik. You think so little of weakness. Why would I have told you that I was captured with such ease?”

“The only way you will get what you paid for is if you rape me,” Malik said, “I will never give it willingly.”

Altair said nothing.

\--

Life continued. His servant brought his food like a frightened mouse scurrying up to a caged lion. Malik spent his days in meditation and physical training. He used the bars of his cage to pull himself up until his arms were thick-and-strong. He jogged in the limited confines of his cage. 

He read the books he was given and was given new ones. 

Altair did not come to see him. First, it was welcome. Then, it was insulting. 

\--

Another woman came, just as the days grew shorter and Malik was given new blankets and new clothes to wear. His servant who brought him food came in the afternoon to light a candle just beyond his reach for him to see by and returned after supper was served to light a second. 

But this woman was a noble—some highborn woman, surely—who entered the room with her head held at a lofty angle and her hands at her sides. It was mid-day and the house above them was a buzzing-hive of noise, but this room was abandoned and quiet. 

“I expected something different,” she said when stopped just inside the doorway. Her hands were pale-white and her hair was pitch-black. 

Malik let go of the bars and dropped to the floor with a quiet touch of his feet on wood and the obnoxious loudness of his chain. He had bought his shackle with the blood he’d spilt in confinement and even Altair-his-Master had no power to remove it now. “Then you’re a fool,” Malik said.

The woman took a step to the side, but looked at him as she moved. “No, you are not a surprise. I have heard many things about you, Malik Al-Sayf. Your presence and your reputation have been quite a scandal, I have had many arguments with my father about the convenience of a ready Omega for a young marriage, you know. He thinks Altair is too young and you are too dangerous. You,” she said as she stopped just beneath the one window set high into the wall, “are everything I expected you would be.”

“What is not what you expected?” Malik asked.

“This room,” she said, “I’ll fix it when the marriage is finally allowed.” Her hand reached out to touch the walls and then to touch the bars of his cage far from where he stood. Her eyes were wide-and-bright (and fearless) as she looked at him before she pulled away and went back out of the room.

\--

Altair came before the wedding, looking haggard and old in a young man’s body. He kept a polite distance. “I am sure you have heard I am getting married.”

“To Maria Thorpe,” Malik said. “Not an Omega bride, unlike her Mother. The servants are chatty, and I am a very captive audience.” 

“That is not why I’ve come. You understand what will happen if three years pass and there is no child.” 

“They take me back and sell me again,” Malik said. “You won’t stand a chance at getting me back and all your efforts to prolong my life against my will become nothing more than a waste of time. I will slaughter the man that tries to touch me and my death will be a fine public spectacle. Perhaps you’ll even bring your pretty wife—she doesn’t mind that you’ll never have another chance to have a child, does she?”

Altair’s face went impassive with violence the way his voice hollowed out to a deadened lull. “I will come at the end of every week to ask if you’ve changed your mind.”

“I can’t stop you,” Malik said.

\--

It became like clockwork. Malik spent days in isolation broken only by the arrival of his meals and the few times that his little servant came to tell him the many happenings of the house. She filled hours with her prattle about how Maria was liked and how society was going on and how she had secret hopes after a young man in a neighboring house that tended horses.

Malik slept and ate and ran laps.

The sun rose, fell and rose again.

Altair came at the end of the week to be rejected and retreat back into the stifling normality of his married life.

\--

Things might never have changed if Maria had not come. She came while Altair was-away, dragging a short chest of drawers down into his lonely room. It was heavier than her by far but she was persistent. He watched her struggle with it until it was against the wall farthest from him. 

“You could have sold it if you did not like it,” Malik said.

Maria laughed and wiped the sweat off her forehead with her long sleeve. “It certainly would have been simpler than moving it out of my bedroom.” She ran her hand across it, over the fine carving on the front of the drawers and the deep color of it that made her skin seem even paler. “Altair hates it,” she said, “it is because he has no taste for the beauty of non-living things.” Then she left and came back a short time later with a vase that had more color than the whole of his miserable little cell. 

“What are you doing?” Malik asked.

“Decorating,” Maria said. 

“There must be a number of rooms that would benefit from your time and energy.”

She looked over her shoulder at him with a disbelief frown. “There must be something else worth your time and energy. I am not so easily dissuaded from something I want. This is the room I want to decorate. If you do not like something you can say so and I’ll try to replace it with something you do.”

“I don’t like these bars,” he said and gripped them with one of his hands. 

“You bought those bars,” she said. There was no mercy in the words. She stood there with her hands on her hips and the full brunt of the terrible honesty set into her spine. “Most Omegas here—they understand what is expected of them and they do not fight it with the same violence that you did. This is the condition of your contract, we cannot alter that now.”

“Don’t offer me something you cannot provide,” Malik said.

“Don’t blame me for what you brought on yourself.”

\--

“Your wife is a bitch,” Malik said when Altair came at the end of the week. There was a pause where Malik waited for a fight but Altair opened and then closed his mouth like he thought better of being drawn into a battle. 

“Have you changed your mind?” Altair asked.

“No,’ Malik said. And then Altair left.

\--

Maria came every day, between breakfast-and-lunch. She took up an endless parade of hobbies that filled the corners of his room with messy things like paint and abandoned musical instruments. 

“You have no musical talent,” Malik had said after a week of being tortured by the noises Maria made. 

She laughed and it was such a nice-sound to hear. Her dress rustled when she turned on the short stool she had brought in for whenever she wasted time in the room with him. 

Malik was sitting with his back against the bars in the middle of his cell. It was the spot that he had adopted to occupy whenever she came—it was not respect that motivated him but the idea that she was relatively innocent in the whole debacle. He had not even managed to hate her as the days dragged on and she returned again-and-again to occupy the shared space. “Your artistic talent is also lacking.” 

“Thankfully, Altair has enough artistic talent to produce bits of art for me to show to my friends. It’s very important to have a talent, you know. One simply cannot be a lady of leisure with no accomplishments. I host parties, I make pretty little paintings and drawings and I spend my husband’s impressive wealth.”

“I did wonder what would drive you to waste time with me,” Malik said.

“My cage is far from being as literal as yours, Malik. It is not less real nonetheless. I married Altair because he understands that I would rather be playing with swords than dealing with society.” She turned on her stool so the end of her skirt was puddled through the bars of his cage, her elbows were against her knees and her fingers were close enough he could have touched her if she allowed it. 

“Did he promise you a child?” Malik asked.

“Of course he did not. The fact that you hate him for his choices does not make him hateful, Malik. He assured my parents he was doing his best to produce an heir but he told me the truth. You are never going to allow it and one day we will bury you next to your brother.” Maria scooted closer to the bars, put her hands on them and held her face just beyond them as she looked at him. “Why?” she asked. “Do you find him repulsive?”

“What would you do if you were in this cage, Maria? Would you allow your _owner_ to use you in exchange for the ‘freedom’ that you were promised? Do you know what happens when Omegas are turned out to the street? They are bought again and again until they’re used up. That is if they are fortunate, because the unfortunate ones are beaten and raped and held captive in dank basements while their infants are taken and sold to desperate families clawing for some sense of immortality. I will die, here or out there. This is the only choice I have left.”

“I can’t imagine what I would do,” Maria said. “I was not raised in the streets. I was not raised here at all, where I come from Omegas are not so rare. I would like to think I’d have the courage to fight, but I don’t know.”

“Tell Altair I haven’t changed my mind, tell him he doesn’t need to come again this week.” Because he couldn’t stand to look at the man now, couldn’t imagine having to send him away again knowing the inevitable end.

\--

They passed a year like that. Maria installed shelves in his room that she filled with books and maps that his (recently married) servant girl could pass to him when he requested them. She hung pictures that she claimed to have made and put him to work removing the old carpets to replace them with fresh ones. They could not open the door to his cage without Altair so removing the carpets took a matter of finesse and patience as they fed them bit-by-bit through the narrow slits in the bars.

Maria took up cooking for a time and shared all of her success with him. She sat next to the bars of his cage while he ate the foods she had eaten as a child while she told him about the life she had in the distant-home where her parents had retreated to. “My Mother wasn’t safe here,” she said.

Then her hand slipped between the bars and touched his bare shoulder. Her skin was as cool as it looked as it fit around the thickness of his arm and then moved up to his neck. It had been some time since his little servant girl had come with her bowl of water and her shaky-hand to shave his face. “I’m sorry,” Maria said. “It does nothing to help you but I do not want to go another day without saying it.”

Malik shrugged. “It could have been worse,” he said, “it would be worse if you had not come.”

And that made her cry. He couldn’t take her tears or the way she was trying not to make noise as she stifled her tears so he moved away from her and let her escape.

\--

Altair came at the end of the week with a bowl of water, a razor and a bar of foamy white soap. He opened the cage and threw the key across the room as he had so-very-long-ago. He pulled the door shut as if he felt perfectly-at-ease with walking into Malik’s cell with a sharp weapon and nobody to save him.

“I’ll assume you have not changed your mind,” he said.

“As you should,” Malik said. He sat up and pulled his shirt off because he had only the one and he did not getting it wet when it could be avoided. His hands were in his lap as Altair sat the bowl, soap and razor in front of him. “I cannot touch the razor,” Malik said, “it’s against the contract.”

Altair sat in front of him, set the towel he’d brought across his lap. They did not talk as Altair shaved him with steady-sure hands. They did not talk when his face was clean save for a scruffy little patch at his chin and Altair was rubbing the towel across his skin to clean it from the foamy soap. They did not talk when it was done and they had nothing but time until someone came to free Altair.

Malik rolled his eyes when Altair threw the razor through the bars, out of reach. “I hate you, but I would not kill you.”

“My wife is very fond of you,” Altair said, “sometimes I wonder if she married me for you.”

“I hope not, or you may find yourself without a wife in a year.”

Altair’s jaw tightened and his pulse jumped at his throat. He swallowed back some foul-breath of words and shook away the pink-rage that rose in his cheeks. “I hate you,” Altair said when he thought he could trust his voice. “I hate you so much.” Then he picked himself up and moved to the opposite end of the cage.

\--

“What if we changed your contract?” Maria said when three years had been whittled away to ten months. She had given him paper and writing implements a few months ago and he had made a series of black marks to count down the days until he was free-at-last. Altair had started to come twice-a-week and Malik sent him away every time (‘have you changed your mind’ to ‘have you decided to keep your promise’). “What if we promised to keep you for the whole of your life?”

“Then I’d be one man’s whore instead of every man’s.”

Maria screamed at him with her hands in the air. “There has to be something that would entice you to live! There has to be some fate you find preferable to beheading.”

A quake of fear went through his body at those words. He had done-so-well counting down the moments until he died and so-very-well at ignoring the circumstances of what his death would be. It hadn’t mattered in the beginning how it ended so long as it did. “I want to be the man I was born as. I want this foul body to be taken from me and given to someone that wants it. You can have it—the bloody knowledge that one day you squeeze a squalling infant from your loins. _That_ is what I want. Unless you have that power there is nothing you can offer me.”

“You miserable, awful man!” she shouted at him before she left him alone.

\--

Altair came in the middle of the week, put his hands on the bars and leaned his body against it. “She asked me why I haven’t just taken you. She said—you only think that you want to die and by the time you realize that you want to live it’ll be too late. She called me a coward. She has moved herself out of my bedroom.”

“You will never have a dull moment with her, I feel.” Malik was half-asleep in the dimness of the room. It was a warm-night and he was content to lay half-naked and uncovered against his many cushions. 

“If I let you leave,” Altair said, “I die, she dies, everyone that works in this house dies. You were cheap to obtain but the terms of your contract are the most severe I have ever seen. It didn’t seem important before—I thought I could make you see reason. I would give my life to set you free. Maria would take her chances. But the others—I cannot do it to them. Not even for you.” He sighed, leaned his head against the bars. “Have you changed your mind?”

“No.”

\--  
Nine months and then eight. His servant brought his meals with a look of horror dawning on her face. She set his plate on the table outside of his bars and sat on the little chair that Maria had brought nearly a year ago. Married-life had plumped her up and livened her dull skin with a rich glow of happiness. “Please don’t do this,” she said quietly. 

“Eat?” he said, “has Maria been cooking again?”

“They have been coming to settle your contract, Malik. They know Master Altair hasn’t…been with you, they know you will never give yourself to him. They come every day now, they demand that you be returned to them. He keeps protesting, Mistress Maria keeps sending them away but they’ll take you soon.” She leaned across the table and looked at him with more compassion than she had ever managed before. “Please don’t do this.”

“It’s already done,” Malik said.

\--

Maria came in the evening with her husband’s key to his cell in her hand. She turned it in the lock and pulled the door open while he stared at her. She slammed the door and threw the key to the side before. Her footsteps were quick-and-dangerous as she crossed to where he was moving to stand. Her hand was small when she struck him on the fact and the chest and the arm. There were tears on her face as she started making a noise like a growl that grew in volume until it may as well been a scream. His skin was red-and-pink with irritation even after she stopped slapping him and fell against his body. 

He held her in his arms and rested his face against the soft mess of her dark hair. It had been-so-long since he’d been this close to any other body the way he was close to hers now. Her arms went around his back and her face pressed against his neck. She rubbed his back until the quake of her sobs settled into little hiccups and then went still. 

“I wish things had been different,” she said. “He’ll be here in a moment.” But she did not move away from him until Altair entered the room in a rush and found the key beneath the chest of drawers. Maria let go of him with great reluctance and left the room before Altair closed the door again. 

“When do they come take me?” Malik asked.

Altair was rigid-with-rage, white-and-pink spotted with it. “I thought she’d come to let you out. I thought I’d find an empty cell when I got here, and I’d have to beg men to kill me instead of servants that work in my home. I ran down here thinking you’d finally made it to freedom and it was the first _hope_ I’ve had in years. But you’re here, and it’s really done. You are going to die. They come for you at the end of the week.”

\--

His serving girl did not bring his food anymore. Maria brought it and Altair brought it but nobody else came to see him in the final days of his captivity in their home. Maria came in sullen silence but Altair came in spiteful hate. They threw his food on the table and sat until he finished it.

\--

There was a commotion on Thursday like boots across wooden floor and hard shouts so loud they vibrate through the walls. The servants were shouting objections but the fast-footsteps on the stairs were Maria’s. She came through the door with her arms stretched out in front of her.

“He wasn’t going to let them take you, he was going to keep his promise to you—Malik,” she said in a desperate rush. There were echoing footsteps at the top of the stairs that led to his cell. Fear twisted so tight in his chest his hands went numb and his mouth couldn’t form the shape of the words he meant to say. “Don’t let them have you,” she said, “don’t let them touch you—I will get you back. Don’t let them touch you.” She was still saying it when the men with meaty fists and long ropes came into the room. A little courier stood in the center of them with a rolled parchment sealed like a fresh contract and he started to read it even as the men broke into Malik’s cell with heavy weapons. 

“Don’t let them!” Maria was shouting from where they were pushing her up the steps. 

Malik did not even have time to fight them, they were on in seconds, striking his head with the blunt end of a sword and knocking him into blissful-black-unconsciousness.

\--

Malik woke up with both of his wrists in shackled to a short chain fed through a loop in the floor that afforded him just enough space to crouch, kneel or sit with his shoulders rolled forward. There were no bars here, no blank room safe from servants and innocent bystanders. His head ached as he lifted it to look around the elaborate bedroom he found himself in. 

“You will find,” the man sitting in the massive chair to his left said, “that I am not the forgiving Master Altair is.” His voice was heavy with a foreign accent the way his body was thick with muscle. His face had a decidedly cruel twist of arrogance about it as he set down the cup he had been drinking from. “Unlike my countrymen, I am not appalled by the seemingly ‘barbaric’ conditions you Omegas face. You are livestock, you deserve to be kept like _livestock_.” 

But Malik’s head hurt when he held it up and his shoulders felt pulled out of socket from trying to sit straight. The room came in and out of focus as he tried to look at the man. It was fear that kept him from falling back into the familiar embrace of darkness. 

The man came over to him, grabbed his chin and pulled his face up so he could see it. “I have no wish for children,” he said, “the little mongrels will be released back into the wild where they belong. But I will enjoy breaking you.” The man pulled his hand away before Malik could bite him and slapped him in the face for trying. The shock of it made the black ache in his head squeeze tighter and he tipped forward and vomited on the floor before he could contain it. “Bad dog,” the man said before he reached down to shove Malik’s face in it. “Bad dog,” he said again.

The rattling of the chain was the final-sound of helpless defiance Malik heard before the world went black.

\--

Malik woke up with blood in his nose and dried vomit stuck to his face. There was light in the room that highlighted the luxury in which it was dressed. A skinny-boy stood across the room with bright-wide-eyes. He had his father’s pale face and the same arrogance in motion as he stepped closer.

“Dog,” the boy said. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen-or-fourteen. Small and slight for his age, bolstered only by the commanding presence his father held. But he came on soft-footsteps to lean in and spit on Malik’s back. “Dog,” he said again.

“Pig,” Malik said back.

The boy’s eyes went wider and he turned around and caught up a switch off the table. He swatted it against Malik’s bare back again-and-again with the labored-pants of effort that betrayed the weakness of his body. When he was satisfied that he’d drawn enough blood to atone for the insult he spit on Malik again and walked away. 

Malik bit his lip until the boy was gone and then let out the breath he’d been holding and folded forward to rub his head against his hands. After a pause he rapped his fists around the thick chains and threw his body backward to pull at the ring bolted into the floor. It creaked-and-whined as he yanked on it but it did not give. He exhausted himself with the effort and sat leaning back as far as he could manage while blood ran from the new wounds on his wrists.

\--

A servant who brought him a dish of water to drink out of told him his new Master was Robert De Sable but she also called him a dog. Malik drank the water to wash the taste of old blood and vomit out of his mouth. 

He sat and contemplated the wounds on his wrists, thought of how much force it would take to dislocate his thumbs, how much badly it would hurt and how long it would incapacitate him.

\--

Perhaps, the first mistake Robert made was leaving him unattended for so long. Not even Altair who had abandoned him in an empty room had allowed him to go longer than half an hour without someone peeking in to look at him. Robert had not bothered to give someone the task of checking on him.

The second mistake had been the bowl they served his water in that broke to shards big enough to sever arteries. 

The third mistake, perhaps the most important, had been underestimating the lengths to which Malik would go to attain his freedom. He took the shard of pottery, drew it across his left arm deep enough to make the blood well out thick-and-slick. It washed down his arm to where the cuff was pulled tight against the largest part of his palm. It slicked the base of his thumb and the broad flat of the back of his hand. Malik braced his foot against the loop, wrapped the chain around his right wrist and held it tight in his right hand before he took the rolled up length of cloth he cut off his pants and stuck it into his mouth.

His screams echoed like bloody-punches inside of his own skull, rattling around until they came out as hurried-little-gasps between the wet gaps in his teeth. His hand broke before it gave, his skin sloughed off from the thick metal grip of the shackle and fell in wet slaps against the ground. The shackle hit the ground with a resounding thump. 

Malik sagged forward, let the cloth fall from his mouth and pinched his eyes closed as the throbbing pain from his left hand radiated through his body unlike anything he’d felt in so long he’d nearly forgotten how terrible-and-breath-taking pain _was_. His chest and arms and jaw were shivering when he finally managed to open his eyes and take stock of what damage he’d done to himself. His thumb was dislocated at best and broken at worst, the skin on the outside of his hand had been sheered away and bled freely from the ragged wound left behind. 

All this and he had only earned half of his freedom. He got on his knees and crawled toward the table and the assortment of things on it. His right hand could not reach it at first but he pulled it closer with his foot. He meant to find something to help his escape but he found himself laying his head on the cool surface instead. 

Just-for-a-moment, just that long.

\--

The bleeding stopped and Malik sorted through the scatter of things and found nothing to help him remove the second shackle. His chances of escape and survival had already been halved when he sacrificed his left hand, injuring the second would amount to allowing Robert De Sable to use him freely.

The servant that had brought him water returned as the sun faded from the sky with a pitcher (full of water, presumably) and stopped short just inside of the door. He was a bloody mess with one free hand as he picked through the trinkets left on the table. She went white-with-shock and dropped the pitcher before she turned to run with a shriek.

“Fuck,” he said. He tried to get to his feet and the best he could manage was his knees before the short chain pulled him to an abrupt stop. He had a matter of seconds to figure out what he should do before Robert’s great body was coming through the door with a furious-expression and a shining-silver knife.

“Bad dog,” he said.

\--

It came like dream, these things that couldn’t be real. Somewhere between the comforting _nothing_ the sharp-and-bloody interjections of noise-and-light jerked him out of sleep and left him on the verge of some terrible _waking_.

The sound-and-hard-pinch of his knees against bloody wood. The silver streak of a knife close to his face and the deep snarl of a foreign face and whispered words that tasted like maggots when it crossed his lips.

Then again, blood in his mouth, the hard press of wood on his back and the twisted-agony of something tearing into his _arm_ as he jerked-and-twisted-and-clawed for his freedom. 

‘Bad dog,’ like a mantra against the back of his neck as hands ripped at his clothes, as he was held down in a puddle of his own blood with his good arm twisted at his back and the useless meat of his left pushed up against his chest.

But something like: the feeling of metal in his hand the grateful feeling of freedom when he cut into the body that was pinning him down. The ecstatic thrill of freedom when the chain hanging from his right hand dragged _across_ the floor it had once been pinned to. 

No it was, vertigo in his spinning head, the deadened thud of his feet as he ran on unfamiliar steps. Cool evening air splashed across his body when he found a door that led into the street. People were moving in the streets—everywhere, all at once—and a horse was screaming in shock or surprise as someone gasped at his side. Malik was slipping in mud because it must have rained and he landed on his left side, crushed the broken bones against his ribs as the torn skin ripped again.

Maria’s hands as she caught him and pulled him up. Maria’s face when he held the knife to her throat. The sound of her throbbing heartbeat jumping into her words when she said, “did he take you? Did he—” 

Malik woke up in _his cell_ , his left arm swollen with pain and held together with the most cursory of white bandages. His head felt thick-and-turned the wrong way on his shoulders as he lifted himself on his sore right arm. There was no shackle on his wrist but a thick pad of bandages spotted with blood. 

Altair was sleeping with his back against the wall and his arms across his chest, balanced on the edge of stool. The sound of Malik moving must have roused him because he shot up with a knife in his hand and a blade coming from his left wrist that appeared out of nowhere. 

“Malik!” he shouted. He yanked the door to the cell open and fell to the floor at his side. “Malik,” he said again.

There were gaps-and-holes, too many things that Malik didn’t remember (too many that he did). Altair’s hands hovered over his body but didn’t touch him and Malik didn’t look at him but at the length of his arm poorly splinted and swelling through the bandages. “Did he…” he said.

“No,” Altair said, “the council had their doctors…examine you and they did this,” he motioned at the bandages on his arm. “Maria hounded them until they agreed to return you to us because at least we did not break the contract.” Altair sat back because he wouldn’t touch Malik and looked to the side rather than look at him. “I’ll do it now if you want,” he said, “we only have a month this time. There’s no reason to make you wait that long.”

The pain was seeping around the broken edges of Malik’s body, sinking itself into his chest and head until he was sweating in the coolness of the room. He thought-about-dying, thought about the room where he’d spent a single day, thought about his hand when it broke and the way Robert had held him down and cut into him. 

“Bring me his head,” Malik said. He looked at Altair—not the rich-man’s-son but the bloody-little-boy he’d met in the streets. “I’ll give you a child if you bring me his head.” 

Oh-and-the-fury that made Altair’s eyes go bright was the most beautiful thing Malik had ever seen in his life.

\--

Maria had to know but when she came, it was with a surgeon and a massive man that was labelled his ‘assistant.’ She was efficient, not apologetic, when she said, “they’re here to examine your arm.”

“I’d rather not do that here,” he said. This ungodly little cell was meant to be his home for at least another month. There was no reason to crowd it full of anymore memories to keep him from sleeping. Maria nodded her head and opened his cell with the key she was not meant to have. 

\--

They offered him drugs but they did little to keep him unconscious as the surgeon sawed his arm away. Malik fell asleep after, slid into it sluggishly and woke up in the days after when the bandages needed changing. Maria came to do it and to kiss his head when he woke up enough to mumble something approaching understandable.

“Rest,” she said. 

\--

His servant was crying every time she brought him food. No matter how hard she seemed to try, she could not stop herself from staring at the bloody bandages where his arm abruptly ended.

Malik ate to stave off exhaustion. Mostly he slept and _dreamed_ of Robert’s body crushing his.

\--

“You sent my husband to kill a man,” Maria said when it was midnight-dark and there was only a single candle to hear them. She was sitting outside his cell, leaning against it in her flimsy-thin night things. Her hair was free and wavy on her shoulders.

“I offered him a suitable reward,” Malik said. He was groggy with sleep and the medicine that Maria kept slipping into his drink when he refused it outright. The absence of his left arm was a pulse of pain and the phantom sort of feeling of fingers against his chest. That was how he would have been laying, perhaps, and his body could simply not understand where his left hand had gone.

Maria hummed. “Altair did not tell me how you met. He only told me that he made you a promise he could not keep. I assumed you were a servant at first, and I heard of your profession before you were discovered as an Omega. I did not think—I did not question how you met until now.”

“Don’t question it,” Malik said. His mouth was dry but the cup he drank from was too far away to reach without moving and his body had reached a stasis point in pain he did not wish to disturb. 

“Is my husband a killer, Malik?” 

“Will you leave him?” Malik asked.

“No. I will leave him when I die and not before. But I like to know what I’m involved in when I can.” She picked up the glass and passed it to him through the bars. He held it but didn’t raise it to his lips so she dipped her fingers into the water and rubbed the droplets on his dry lips and tongue. 

“Yes,” Malik said. Then he was falling asleep again.

\--

It was a matter of weeks before Altair came back to him. He came after dark, slipping in through the open door like a ghost with a hood over his head to obscure his face and unfamiliar white robes held tight to his body by a red sash. He carried a sopping-red-white-sack in one hand that he dropped on the ground outside of the cell so it rolled toward the meager light of the candle Maria had left burning.

Malik had been weaned off the drugs in the past week, he had started pacing his cell again, his body only just started feeling alive-again in the past few days. The nightmares had driven him out of sleep again-and-again now that there was no drug to keep him lost in the gray-nothingness. He was _raw_ from the things he remembered even as he reached through the bars of his cell and opened the sack Altair brought him.

“He begged me for his life,” Altair said.

Malik stared at the frozen horror on Robert’s face, at the tears on his cheeks and the ragged red stump where his neck had been. His bald head was covered in scratches and there was a bluish mark in the center of his forehead where a bruise might have been forming before he died. 

Altair opened the door of the cell. “I won’t hold you to our agreement, Malik. You’re free. I don’t care what happens anymore.”

Malik slapped the dead face of the man that had tried to rape him, the man that had tore his arm to bloody pieces and laughed as he snapped Malik’s bones. He got to his feet and spit on it, ran his right hand across the bars as he worked through the dimness of the room to the open cell door and came back to stomp his foot on the man’s head. 

“Malik,” Altair said, and when that did nothing to stop him, “Malik,” with arms around his chest. Altair recoiled when Malik jerked away from and turned around. He was braced-for-a-fight but he was completely unprepared for Malik to yank him forward by the neck to kiss him. Altair didn’t protest but kissed him back with the same blind desperation to get closer. His hands were broad and warm—colored here and there with flecks of blood—and all over Malik’s back. 

Malik pulled Altair down, held him in place with his right arm as they kissed. Altair’s hands were working his pants off, yanking them free from Malik’s legs even as he tried to spread them open. The length of Altair’s white robe was a coarse scratch against his bare skin save for where Altair was pulling it apart to bare his own skin. 

“Malik,” Altair said but whatever he meant to ask was smothered when Malik kissed him again. He wrapped both of his legs around Altair’s body and hissed at the convulsive tightness of Altair’s hand on his chest. The whole of his left side was a tender spot like it could share the damage of his removed arm if it only tried hard enough. Altair pulled his robe up out of the way and probed between Malik’s legs for the (unnatural) slickness. 

“Oh,” Malik said when Altair’s fingers pushed into him. He tipped his head back and clenched his fist in Altair’s hair as the man licked at his neck and pulled his fingers free to press his dick where they had been. They were both groaning at that—Malik from the shock of it, Altair from a reluctant pleasure. Malik pulled his hair and Altair was kissing him again as he fucked into him. 

“Did he suffer?” Malik gasped when Altair’s groans made the kiss fall apart. His back was skidding on the hard floor between Altair’s flat palms as his arms flexed with the effort supporting his body as he fucked into Malik slow-but-sure. “Did you make it hurt?”

Altair’s eyes took a moment to focus, and his smile when it came was a vicious split across his face. “I took him apart, Malik.” Then Altair kissed him again and there was nothing gentle in the way his body slammed into Malik’s. 

Malik clawed at his skin through the robes, bit at his mouth and used his own legs to meet the hurried-thrusts of Altair’s hips. He wasn’t-ready-(not nearly ready) when Altair’s rhythm faltered and his hips hitched up tight to Malik’s body. His body shook when he came and Malik cursed at him until Altair was moving down his body to mouth at his dick and slip fingers into him. 

\--

Altair led him through the house, filled a tub with heated water and leaned against the side of it as he used a soft towel to wash Malik. They were awkward with one another, unsure of the boundaries of their bodies. Altair washed his hair for him, shaved his face again and helped him dry himself when they were done. 

There were fresh clothes to wear. 

“I meant what I said, Malik. You’re free—to go or stay.” Altair looked regretful and unsure as he turned away to head back to his wife. He stopped after a few steps and said, “if I have any right to say, I’d rather you stayed.”

“You don’t,” Malik said. He stood and watched Altair hang his head and walk away.

\--

Malik found himself in the library and could not swear that he had even been looking for a way out of Altair’s house. He had walked through it for the first time, seen the rooms that must have been decorated by Maria—touched the paintings she had hung on the walls and the fine furniture she must have chosen to place there.

When he found a library, he sat on the cushions that were piled in a corner, slid his hand under them to feel for the books hidden underneath. He ran his fingers across the pages and held the book against his chest as he lay back. 

There were nightmares behind his closed eyes, but there was a numbness to his living body. He looked up at the blackness of the dark room, rubbed his finger across the worn cover of the book and tried to pick up the jostled-and-broken pieces of who he had thought he was to put them back in order.

\--

Altair found him the next day. His face was too passive to betray either shock or relief. He simply walked over and sat at his side, legs crossed and hands resting respectfully at a distance from Malik’s body. 

Malik sat up, turned to face Altair and crossed his legs to mirror Altair’s. Their knees touched until Altair shifted back just enough to put a short gap between them. “I swore that I would die rather than live this life, even before I knew what I was. I swore to myself I would die rather than be discovered. I swore to myself I would die rather than be sold. I swore to myself I would die rather than be taken by you. I swore to myself I would die rather than taken by any man. I was ready to die when you brought me here, I could have died then if not for you. I have spent five years of my life ready to die. But when death came—” Malik licked his lips, felt a peculiar tear of fear in his chest that felt unlike anything he’d felt before. 

“Something must have changed,” Altair said.

“I don’t want to die,” Malik said. “I don’t want _this_.” He closed his eyes and let out a breath, when he opened them again, Altair was looking at his own broken knuckles rather than at him. “You said we had a month, how much of that time is left?”

“Five days,” Altair said. “Don’t ask me to do it again, Malik. I know you don’t want me, you’ve told me often enough. They’ll be satisfied that you’ve been—taken. It will get us more time, you’ll get strong enough to leave.”

Malik moved to his knees, shuffled forward into Altair’s lap, and crowded close enough to him that Altair had to look at his face. Malik’s skin had gone pale from being caught inside for so long but he was still darker than Altair. “This is my body,” he said. There was no mistaking the flush on Altair’s neck or the hungry way his eyes dilated when he looked at Malik. The touch of his hands on Malik was chaste-now but Malik remembered when they were ravenous against his skin. “Mine,” he said again.

“I know,” Altair said. His hands were stretched around Malik’s ribs, framing the bone without trying to hold him in place. 

“Why didn’t you let me die?” Malik asked. His hand was on Altair’s chest, feeling the heat-and-strength of it. He ran his hand over the slope of his shoulder, felt the wholeness of his arm from shoulder to wrist. 

“I love you,” Altair said so-very-softly, “I was selfish. I thought I was being noble, I thought I was saving you from yourself. I’m sorry, Malik. I should have said it a thousand times and I didn’t. I blamed you and I hated you but I kept you in a cage while I pretended to be _honorable_. I’m sorry.”

Malik touched his face, felt the tick of his jaw when he spoke, and his neck where his pulse was a quick flutter, down to his collarbone prominent under the loose shirt he wore. Malik pushed his hand into it and ran the back of his fingers over the rough hair on Altair’s chest. “I don’t forgive you,” he said. He pulled his hand free, pushed it down between Altair’s legs where he had grown hard. He cupped his palm around him and squeezed his fingers just-tight-enough to make Altair’s skin blush so pink and his breath wheeze out through his licked-red-lips. “Tear the cage apart,” he said.

Altair nodded. 

Malik lifted up onto his knees enough to push his pants off his hips before he pulled the string of Altair’s pants open to pull his dick free. It was thick and long, eager as it stood away from his body, already slick at the tip. Malik raised himself up and Altair’s hands were on his hips like one last grasp at sanity.

Altair’s eyes were closed when Malik pressed their foreheads together. His breath was filled with Malik’s name until Malik covered his mouth with his hand.

\--

Malik slept in the library after and woke to a spread of food. His little mouse must have brought it to him after Altair told her where to find him. He picked at the food as he tried to ignore the discomfort in his body from being taken twice in such a short span of time. It was a burning kind of pain, almost like an ache that might have been entire unpleasant. He got to his feet after a time, picked up the dishes to return them to the kitchen and found himself wandering through the house now that he could see things in greater detail. A sweet wind blew through the windows and the open doors and he found himself standing and looking out at the bewildering freedom presented to him.

There had been rain again, the ground was wet when he stepped out onto it. The mud slid between his toes in a way that he had never enjoyed. The air itself was damp from the rain—perhaps only just stopped—but fresh and infinite around him. The sounds of living things were _everywhere_ without the muffling closeness of four walls and an endless row of bars. The sun was bright-and-blinding where it cracked through the clouds and he lifted his arm out to the side as he tipped his head back.

\--

“They told me you were out here,” Maria said when she found him. She stepped daintily around the puddles that he had stomped in, avoided the many dips he had dug with his feet and stood just beyond the damp huddle he had found to sit in. They were hidden by a low tree, couched between a strange collection of green leaves where the shade was light and the sun teased at touching him. 

“And so I am,” Malik said.

“Stop using him,” Maria said. But then, “I—we cannot imagine the things that you have been through. Nothing that has happened to you has been fair, and there is no way to make up for our part in it. But what you are doing now is cruel. He loves you—however impossible you find that idea to be, it is true.”

“I know,” Malik said. He lifted himself up, dusted at the damp dirt that clung to his clothes. “It’s because he loves me that he’ll allow it. I have to prove I’ve been well used or everything that has happened is wasted. It will only be for a little while and then I’ll go.”

“At least show enough kindness to tell him the truth,” she said. 

It wasn’t so very much to ask.

\--

Malik went back to the room where his cage had been built and found it stripped of metal bars. It was a pleasant little room without the cage that had left ruts across the floors and walls. The sack that had Robert’s head in it had been taken and disposed of (he assumed) leaving only a pale stain where it had sat. 

His servant found him there and offered him a plate of food with watery-smile. She looked so very unsure as she leaned in toward him and put her arms around him. Her voice was thick with tears when she said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Malik ate with her in the kitchen and listened to her sweet stories of her husband and how they hoped they would have a child one day. She was tender-and-sweet when she talked about how very much she hoped to have one, the same as his own mother had been when he was small. “I hope you get the chance,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said. 

\--

Altair was in the library when Malik went back to it. He was looking at book like it was only a ruse to keep someone from asking him why he was hiding in a corner when he was master of the house. Malik stopped just to the side of him. “Did she tell you or were you intelligent enough to figure it out on your own?” 

“What great intelligence do I need?” Altair dropped the book he had been looking at and turned to look up at him. “Tell me when you want me to come to you and I will. When you are ready to go, I will give you whatever you require.”

It was as satisfying as Malik (thought he) wanted it to be. Altair shouldn’t have given into him so easily, should have met his demands with practicality. “Morning and evening,” he said, “until they come to inspect me.” He loosened his own pants and let them fall to the floor. Altair looked at the expanse of his naked skin before he looked up at his face.

“Very well,” he said. 

\--

So it went, Altair came to him in the morning and then again at night. Malik wandered his house all the time between, ate with his servant (Ara), and returned to the library to look through the books and sort out the things still rattling loosely in his head.

The men from the council came at the end of the five days and examined him. They asked him nothing but asked Altair many things about why Malik was allowed to roam freely and why it had taken so long to reach this point. They knew, the way everyone knew, that Altair had taken Robert De Sable’s head and their bold questions turned to obedient whimpers as Altair stared them down and offered no answers.

When they had gone, Altair came back to the library and said, “it’s done. I won’t come again.”

\--

Malik stayed until the wound on his left arm was nearly healed and the pain was only bad when he hit the stump against something. He took only the things that he would need to survive—clothes, shoes, food and a few weapons that he found left out (presumably for him). His little mouse of a servant was the only one that saw him go. 

She said, “I’ll tell them you’ve gone.”


	2. Chapter 2

\--

For a while, he walked through the dreary paths between cities, hid as best he could among the anonymous, starving poor. There was no purpose in the path he chose, no final destination he had promised himself as he looked at the maps that hung on Altair’s walls. His journey was only to _move_ , to try to put order back into the chaotic scrape and claw of things stuck inside his skull. 

\--

There was no wise woman, no knowing old hag to tell him the inevitable consequence of letting Altair have him. Malik had not been raised by an Omega but he had seen enough of them in the streets to know the signs when they came on—the first (and perhaps the only one he truly liked) was the lack of blood when it had always been so regular before. Exhaustion and violent aversion to food and _smell_ was his least favorite but it was manageable enough. 

Malik did not talk to the thing that grew inside of him. He had no ill-will toward it but no desire to keep it, either. So he kept moving, pushing outward toward the edges of the world he remembered from Altair’s maps until he found himself standing in front of the tall gate of an unknown castle. 

A man saw him and looked at him curiously—perhaps the way his sleeve was pinned up or perhaps the now obvious stretch of his clothes over his growing belly. Malik braced himself to run but the man did not take a step toward him but called across the distance, “if you are running from someone, they will not find you here.”

“If I’m not?” Malik asked.

“You are still welcome,” the man said. “We have food, a bed. You only have to be willing to work to earn your keep.”

\--

It was called Masyaf—a great castle—where a brotherhood was gathering. They were all boys now, confused and fumbling while men with big ideals jockeyed for the position as leader. Malik tended their library while they argued about their purpose. 

One man said, “freedom.”

Another said, “peace.”

\--

Malik grew round in the summer when the heat made him miserable and the stretch that deformed his body made him think fondly of the days when he had been willing to die. Nightmares jerked him awake on the nights the thing inside of him didn’t keep him up with his insistent kicking. When he couldn’t sleep, he went out into the courtyard of the castle where the brotherhood had put up dummies to practice their swordsman ship. He could only manage small knives, and he was slow and burdened with imbalance and aching ankles but it did little to deter him.

“Is there a father?” Rauf asked him once.

“There always is,” Malik said, “unless I misunderstood the process.” 

Then again, a week later, Rauf said, “do you want to tell the father? You don’t have much time left now.”

\--

In the library, Malik scribbled a hundred different letters and burned them all. He kept only the first one that he’d written and sent it out with the rider that was headed back through the cities to where Altair should-have-been. 

It said: If you want what I owe you, come to Masyaf.

\--

Malik gave birth to the child with only an aged midwife to assist him. She was half-blind and half-deaf and it was just as well because Malik was cursing and beating his fist against whatever he could reach. Her voice was a calm, dull noise that brought a sense of reason back to him when the pain eased and he had space to think again.

Altair-had-a-son and Malik was left to care for it until he came to take him. They spent days in the small room Malik had been given, laying together in discomfort. The boy from being born and Malik from the effort of pushing the boy out. 

“You don’t look much like him,” Malik said. The boy was sleeping (at last), gone all still with his tiny face caught in a constant wrinkled scowl. His hands were tiny and his fingers were awkwardly long. His head was pointed at the top and covered with a sparse fluff of pale-brown hair. “You act like him,” Malik told the boy.

\--

The Brotherhood made something of themselves in the many short days of winter. They settled on the defense of freedom-and-peace, they armed themselves for a war they meant to fight against the injustice of all men (for the good of all men). But while the cold kept them close to the warmth of their castle and the few homes that had been built in its shadow, they laid down the laws they meant to abide. 

Malik sat in the warm library while they talked with the boy held against his chest by a sling that Rauf’s helpful wife had made for him. She had come to him in the first days to teach him how to care for the boy. 

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“His father will name him if he comes,” Malik said. For now he called him ‘boy’ or ‘hush’. The others called him ‘son’ when they held him or when he woke up with furious hunger and interrupted their meetings. 

\--

The boy grew: he learned to crawl across the bed and tumbled off in the middle of the night only to wake Malik up with his frightened shrieks that could not be calmed by anything less than half-whispered lullabies. He learned to steal food from Malik’s breakfast and push it into his gaping-pink mouth with his clenched tight fist. His little face would scrunch up when he liked it and it would turn pinkish-purple when he didn’t before he was spitting the offensive dish out again. Rauf taught him to clap his hands together in delight and he spent hours compulsively slapping his hands together. 

Rana, Rauf’s wife, brought the boy toys that her sons had when they were very young and made him a blanket and a cap to keep his head warm. She said, “if his father does not come, will you name him?”

“He’ll come,” Malik said.

\--

The nightmares abated in the spring. Malik felt strong-and-healthy again. The Brotherhood that was building itself at Masyaf treated him as another member—even invited him to join their quest as more than a simple librarian. There were other Omegas that were taken in and given shelter and other children that ran freely around the castle and all the space inside of the defensive wall that stood around it. 

Nobody knew that he had spent three years in a cage. Nobody knew that he had been chained to a floor. The ones that had bothered to ask what had happened to his arm were satisfied to know he lost it in a fight. The ones that questioned where the father of his child was did not press him for answers beyond the simplest ‘not here’. 

The whole of his life was his-at-last. Even the boy that clung to his pants in the library babbling at his heels and rubbing his little wet face into the back of his thigh was not so much the burden that Malik had thought he would be. They had taken to sitting outside in the soft-spring air, the boy in his lap amid the fresh growth of green sprouts that seemed to delight the boy. 

They caught and released little bugs and played in the shallow puddles where water spilled over the edge of the well. The boy learned to pull himself up and scoot on his feet but he cried in fear of letting go. Malik lay on the floor of their room with his feet braced against the wall and let the boy pull himself up using his legs. 

“You have his eyes,” Malik said. They had turned the soft-amber-brown of Altair’s eyes. The boy’s hair had never darkened beyond the light-brown fluff that had grown long enough to hang across his forehead and stick up at the back of his head in the morning. His skin had grown as dark as Malik’s and the combination of his features made him look imprecisely like either of them. 

\--

“There’s a man and a woman that say you sent for them,” Rauf said. “I told them nothing, but I will take you to them.”

Malik set down the books he had been sorting and picked the boy up from where he was rubbing his mouth on the legs of the desk. The child had gotten proficient at latching himself onto Malik’s body when he was lifted by a single arm. He tightened his grip around Malik’s shoulder and hoisted himself up as high as he liked before he gripped his knees in tight and dug his fingers into the holes he’d worn into Malik’s clothes. 

They walked through the familiar halls, out of the castle and down the slope to where the many houses had been built and merchants had come to sell their wares. Rauf had a sturdy-little-home near the gate where his wife and their youngest son lived. 

Malik stood outside of Rauf’s door when they reached it and took a breath. He cupped his hand around the back of the boy’s head and kissed his forehead even as the boy tried to get away from him. “It’s just as well you don’t like me,” he said to the boy.

He went in through the door—expected a hundred-different-things but the shock of seeing Altair and Maria sitting like timid little birds across the table from Rana’s steely and distrustful stare. Altair had a scar across his lip that hadn’t been there before and a fresh red sunburn across his cheeks that would most certainly peel in the coming days. Maria was wearing a man’s clothes with her hair cut short at her back and unruly tan on her face that must have made a proper woman like Rana spit with anger.

“I’ll take son,” Rana said when she saw him. 

Malik lifted the boy off him and he objected with a mighty yell but fell so sweetly into Rana’s arms and pointed her away toward the food he knew was hidden around the corner. Rana called him a greedy boy but she meant to feed him until his belly was bloated with food nonetheless. Rauf had already left and the absence of anyone-else made the room seem stifling and unwelcome. 

“Malik,” Maria said. She elbowed Altair who looked up at him with something like a courteous smile. 

He had walked through a dozen cities on his own, had crossed the last bit of the world he remembered from maps and found himself _here_ with nobody he knew and nothing familiar at all. Malik had built a life for himself out of the nothing he’d come with and there was no reason to be afraid of the not-too-distant reality Altair-and-Maria brought back to him but he felt shaky when he sat across from them nonetheless. “Is Ara well?” he asked. (His mouse of a servant, of course.)

“We got them all out,” Maria said. “It was close but we sent them all away, told them to leave the city and if possible to stay gone. By the time the council found you had gone, it was only Altair and I. He was stripped of his rank but it could have been worse.” She looked toward the sound of the boy cooing at Rana and then back at him. “We would have come sooner but your messenger had trouble finding us.”

Malik had spent months waiting for them, had kept himself awake at nights thinking about how he would hand the child over and send them away and never look back. He had not wanted the boy, he had no use for the boy and no reason to think that he could care for him how he would need as he grew. Malik had convinced himself it would be as easy as that, but he found himself standing up abruptly instead of calmly giving them his son. “I’ll take you to the castle, there is a room there for travelers that need a place to sleep. In the morning they’ll assign you a task to pay for your keep, and so on for every day you stay.”

“Malik,” Altair said.

“Rauf can take them,” Rana said. She was hugging the child to her chest as he stuffed a sweet into his mouth and grinned impishly at Malik. That-was-Altair’s grin, split across his face, oh-so-proud of himself for misbehaving. “You have been promising to visit me for too long, I won’t let you go now that I have you here.” Then she called for her husband and he appeared in the doorway as if he’d only been waiting for the excuse. 

Maria pulled Altair out after her but he went with a stilted-stubborn motion of limbs. 

“I will not give this child to that man,” Rana said.

“He’s a good man,” Malik said. But there was a quake in his body when he fell back into the seat he had stood from. The boy launched himself from Rana’s arms to Malik’s side and smeared his sticky-sweet fingers across his cheek as he tried to comfort him. 

Rana came around to crouch in front of him. “Stay tonight,” she said. “Decide tomorrow.”

\--

Malik woke up early and crept out of the house to sit on the roof. He watched the sun rising with his long robe around his shoulders like a blanket. There should have been a sense of peace, of belonging and of purpose but a numbness settled in his chest that stole the warm comfort of the sun. The house woke up with the light, Rana sang sweet songs to his son as she worked on breakfast.

Rauf left to head up to the castle and check on the travelers that had spent the night—(Altair and Maria) while his youngest son ran after him in a mad dash to impersonate his father’s steady-sure footsteps. Malik smiled at their backs as they went and laid back against the roof so the sun shone brilliant-red through his closed eyelids. 

\-- 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rana asked him while the boy made a mess of his breakfast. Malik shook his head and Rana bit her lip with indecision. She said, “leave the boy with me today. I’ll take care of him and give you a chance to talk with them.”

Malik let her do it—to spare him, to spare the boy, (to buy himself some time).

\--

Altair had been sent to join the other men that worked on building new homes for the many people who found their way on wandering feet to Masyaf. Maria was stationed in the gardens to tend to the dirt that was being cultivated to grow enough food to feed the needy. Malik hid in the library with supreme effectiveness for the better part of the day. It was a strange-silent business without the boy knocking things over and tugging at his pants to demand attention. 

He gave up in the afternoon and went out to the gardens to find Maria at the end of a long row with a sparse pile of weeds at her side and sweat thick in her short-dark-hair. She was wiping the sweat away and spreading the black dirt across her pale skin when he stepped up next to her. 

She turned toward him, squinted up at him and then sat back against her heels and put her hand over her eyes to see him clearly. “This is a good home,” she said.

“It has been good, yes,” he said. They had once spent hours of their day in pointless conversation, trading barbs and ribs through bars with greater ease than they faced one another now. He had nothing to say to her as she got to her feet and looked back at him on even-footing. 

“You look really good,” she said after the pause grew awkward and painful. “How’s your arm?”

“Healed.” Malik touched it through the pinned up sleeve, felt the blunt stump where the bandages were still tied in place (simple habit now, not necessity). Then he motioned at her. “You look good. Is this the person you wanted to be?”

“Oh yes,” Maria said, “Altair started teaching me how to use his swords when we had to leave the house. I’m not as good as he is, but I suppose he has more practice than I do.” She dusted her hands on the end of her tunic and looked back over shoulder at the other women that were working in the garden. “They were telling me about the Brotherhood.”

“Talk is all there is now,” Malik said. “One day they may mobilize. For now they talk about freedom and peace. There are not many here that have the nerve to go out and fight for it.” He was stepping back then, saying, “I have to return to my post. I’ll see you at dinner.” She let him go without protest and went back to the job she’d been given.

\--

Altair was not out with the men that built walls but in the practice field with a wooden sword held in one hand. His white robe and red sash were an aberration against the drab-gray of the other men around him. The crowd was calling shouts of encouragement and praise as they rooted for Tariq. 

Tariq’s defeat was merciful and quick. Altair sidestepped his attack, used the momentum to knock him to his knees and brought the wooden sword to a short stop against the back of his neck. The men howled in offense and appreciation as Tariq shoved the sword off his neck and got back to his feet.

Malik picked up one of the practice swords they brought out on warm-days and stepped over the fence of the practice ring. A few of the men stuttered objections, but Tariq knocked against his left side and said, “take him down, book-keeper.” Then he was crawling out of the ring with his injured pride like a black cloud over his head. 

Altair stood opposite him—tall and lithe and impassive even now. He raised his sword and swept a hand out toward him that invited him to make the first move. Malik licked his lips, took his place and raised his own sword. They were poor imitations of the proper thing—made with splinters, thrown off balance by rough fights and beaten out of shape by repeated use.

They played at a real fight first. Altair was respectful of his unprotected side and Malik was hesitant as he teased Altair like a child poking his brother to rouse him to anger. He slapped the flat of his sword against Altair’s thigh and the man rounded on him with a scowl of anger. 

“Fight or quit,” Altair said to him.

“I am fighting,” Malik said back, “you are not.” He knocked Altair’s next attack to the side and kicked him in the leg, watched as it made him shuffle backward in the loose dirt. His hand went over the dusty spot on his robe. 

Oh-but-when he stood again, his stance had shifted. They fell into the fight with unbridled violence then, clashing swords like the words that had gone unspoken the night before (and so-many-nights-before). There was an outline of noise all around them that faded into white noise, easily ignored and forgotten. But the grunt of Altair’s breath, the effort of his body and the sound of his feet against the dirt was a loud-chorus of threats. 

Malik saw a half-second of weakness just before Altair would have crushed his ribs on the left side and ducked low enough to cut his feet out from under him. Altair fell hard to the left, landed on his back with a loose grip on his sword but he managed to tighten his grip and stab upward at the same moment Malik stabbed downward. 

They were panting-hard, dripping-sweat: Altair’s sword pressed tight against his chest just over his heart and his own sword resting in the dip at the base of Altair’s throat. 

The crowd of men had gone all but silent, and for a moment Malik wasn’t sure if he could loosen his grip but Altair moved first, gave by dropping his sword and holding his hands up in surrender. There was uncertain applause at his victory. Even Altair clapped a hand on his shoulder and gave him a smile when he was on his feet again. 

“It is good to see you,” Altair said. Then he was crawling over the fence and moving out-and-away from the crowd.

\--

Rana brought the boy back to him before the last meal was offered in the castle dining hall. She assured him the boy had been well-behaved but she looked as if she had spent the whole of her day in a harassed scramble averting one disaster and then another. 

The boy sat in his lap in the castle dining hall and picked the food from Malik’s plate, flicking what he found distaste to the side and covering his face with what he liked best. It was not peaceful (exactly) but it was familiar. He tapped the boy’s hand to keep him away from the parts of the meal Malik intended to eat and the boy yelped in objection.

Maria must have followed the sound of it because she came and sat across from him (not next to him) and smiled oh-so-sweetly. “They told me that Altair most likely will not return until the meal is almost over.” 

“Most likely not,” Malik said. 

They sat in silence for a moment, interrupted only by the boy’s aggravated attempts to take Malik’s preferred food. Maria picked at her own food like she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in months (maybe she hadn’t) and watched the two of them with the same speculative intensity that Rana had the night before. “The women in the field asked where we had come from. They told me they thought I was very pretty and very pale and wondered how I had come to be _here_. I told them I came from the city.”

“Many of them came from the cities,” Malik said.

“I think they would kill for you,” Maria said. “They weren’t unkind to me, but they asked why I’d come this far. They asked why Altair was here, if he had come with me, if he were my husband.”

Boy was slapping him now, clawing at his clothes to get at his chest. His nimble-little-fingers had figured out the nature of laces many weeks ago, but the sheer volume of fabric that kept him from his goal was enough to make his face go red with rage. Malik lifted a glass up and offered it to him. The boy wasn’t happy with the compromise but he accepted it.

“If you’re asking if I have given them a reason to hate or harm you, I haven’t. Most of the men and women here have been victims in their own ways, united under the common goal of preventing the same circumstances that brought them here. They know I am from the city, they know I came already pregnant and alone. The most obvious conclusion is the most likely.” He took a drink of water before the boy finished spilling it all over the both of them. “I have no hatred for you or him, Maria.”

“Your son is really handsome,” she said.

Malik wanted to tell her the boy wasn’t his, that he hadn’t ever been his—that he had simply come as the price for freedom and Malik had only kept him because he’d made a promise to Altair he saw no reason not to keep. All these things he had meant to say to her, to Altair himself, when he saw them again. He had warmed his bed with daydreams-and-night dreams of the freedom of simply discarding the boy and all of the many things his very existence reminded Malik of. But he said, “thank you.”

\--

Altair came at the end of the meal when the food had to be scraped from the bottom of pots and salvaged from uneaten portions on returned plates. He hate gratefully the way Maria had, sitting with his back slumped forward as he used his hands to push the food into his mouth. Malik watched him from across the room where he was attempting to scrub the boy’s resisting face in the shallow dishes of warmed water left for such purpose. 

Maria was at his side, rubbing her hand on his back in soothing short-circles while she talked to him lowly enough not to be heard. Altair nodded his head at intervals to show he was looking but kept his mouth too full of food to offer more than that. 

Malik took the boy out of the room but went searching for Fatin who kept the room assignments. “Could you tell me where Altair and Maria’s room is?” 

Fatin was as much his friend as any other woman that worked or lived in the castle. But there was a fiercely protective anger in her that was absent in most of the others. She-too-was an Omega, used by rich people in the cities and then put out to fend for herself. He had never shared his story with her and she had never asked but it was not so difficult to imagine the wounds he saw in her were easily seen in him. “For what purpose?”

“A conversation I need to have away from many ears,” Malik said. 

The derisive little noise she made through her nose was disapproval of the lack of violence in his intent. But she gave him the location of the room and kissed the boy with as much fondness as any mother had for their child. “Do not send our little son away,” she said.

\--

The boy fell asleep in Malik’s lap while he sat in Altair-and-Maria’s room and waited for them to return. Malik’s had was stroking his little chest while they sat in much the same manner he had once stroked his own belly when he was still pregnant. 

Maria-and-Altair came back in a quiet-tired shuffle, entering through the door and stopping short when they found him sitting with his back against the wall by their bed. He had lit a candle to keep the room from falling into darkness while he waited. Maria looked unsure, but Altair looked nearly-frightened. He came anyway, over to where Malik sat. His own body was thinner now than it had been before but it folded with the same ease as he lowered himself to sit in front of Malik. 

“I heard you refused to name him,” Altair said. He was looking at the child, at his slack little face. Altair’s thumb was large across the child’s face, and the spread of his four fingers was enough to cover the top of the boy’s head when he felt his fluffy-brown-hair. 

“I didn’t think he was mine to name,” Malik said. 

Altair straightened again, took his hands away from the boy and looked at Malik-now. “I did not come to take your child, Malik. I came for the hope that my presence would not be entirely unwelcome.”

“You are not entirely unwelcome,” Malik said. It wasn’t much of an offer, he wasn’t even his offer but the one that was given to all travelers that made it this far. “These men could use someone that is swift and strong. They have the will to fight but not the knowledge of how.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Altair said.

“It’s the only offer there is. You could do good here: building houses or teaching men to hunt and kill. That was important to you once.” Malik was moving, dragging the boy up against his chest as he leaned his back to the wall to hoist himself to his feet. Altair didn’t move to help him, didn’t look at his face as retreated from the space that was too stifling and too close around them.

“What about the child?” Altair asked. He was staring at the wall where Malik had been. 

“Even if I could give him to you, these people would not allow you to take him. Prove yourself here, prove to them you aren’t the monster they assume you are then he is yours.” Malik went through the door Maria held open for him and very-nearly convinced himself there was no reason to run the distance to his own room.

\--

The boy turned a year old two weeks after Altair-and-Maria arrived at Masyaf. Rana insisted on a celebration and dragged everyone that lived in the castle into the festival to celebrate the first child ‘born free’ (as she put it). 

“And now,” she said when almost everyone was crowded into the dining hall sharing the usual evening meal as they passed son around covering him with kisses while he squealed and clapped in joy. “our son really must have a name.” 

There was a chorus of agreement, followed behind by several suggestions. Malik was the center of every man’s attention, (even Maria’s as she sat at the end of the table without protest when the boy was passed over and not offered to her). Rauf picked the boy up from the comfortable lap he had found to nest in and carried him back to Malik. 

“He cannot be called ‘boy’ forever,” Rauf said.

“Or son,” Rana added.

Malik looked at him, ruffled his hair and wiped a bit of something red off the corner of his mouth. The boy looked-more like Altair now than he had a few weeks ago. His face was still round and his small cheeks were still plump with fat but his eyes and his mouth were exactly like his father’s. The length of his fingers and the eager energy of his body were all the undeniable traits shared with Altair. 

Malik looked across the room, past the many men that were standing at the edges—still dusty with dirt from working on building the village. He sorted through them until he found Altair near the far wall, leaning back against it and looking as innocent and inconspicuous as he could manage. He picked the boy up and carried him over to Altair, felt the defensive stares of so many eyes following his motion until he stopped at Altair’s right. “What is his name?” Malik asked.

Altair was looking down, to the side, anywhere but directly at him. His shoulders went stiff as his body straightened out of the lean to its full height. He was filthy from hard work that clung to his skin and clothes like a wretched stink that couldn’t be washed away. There was nothing of the rich-man’s-son he had been the last time they met and so much of the dirty-little-boy Malik had met over the body of his dead Omega-mother. “If you would prefer to see me beaten, I’d prefer to have you do it yourself.”

A few voices were calling for Malik to name him, that it was his right. Rana was standing back where he left her with an arm across her stomach and an anxious bite of teeth over her lip. “Do you think I hate you that much?” Malik asked.

“I didn’t before,” Altair answered. He still was not looking at him. 

“This is the last chance you have to name your son.” 

But Altair looked solidly at the floor and Malik nodded his head and turned back to face the many anxious-angry faces that were watching him. (None more anxious or angry than Maria herself.) “Tazim,” he said.

The name was repeated many times by the men-and-women that had watched the boy grow, by the ones that had made his food and his clothes and held him while Malik escaped to work-or-sleep. 

The boy clapped for them and they clapped for him—all of them, the strong-armed men and the teary-eyed women and even the ones that stood indifferent to the whole debacle any other-moment. 

\--

Tazim (the boy) had fallen asleep in an instant as soon as Malik dropped him onto the bed in their room. He lay in a loose-limbed sprawl with bits of food still stuck in his hair and a precious-new-toy clenched in his fist. Malik lay next to him, thinking about the tight fear in Altair’s shoulders and the not-entirely-unwelcome sense of victory that fear brought him. Vengeance was not a foreign concept to him—he had once enacted the vicious bloody revenge that men with money could not concern themselves personally and he had once bought vengeance for himself. 

When he was young, wrath was nothing more to him than a business that he excelled at. Now it was something that coiled around his ribs and filled his belly with warmth-and-peace in a way these long months of freedom had not quite managed. Altair was not trapped here—he was free to go at any time, back out in the world where he would be hungry-and-poor and _unwanted_ like the rest of the anonymous many that died in the streets. The only choice Altair had was which unpleasant home offered his best chance at survival.

It was that, not just the fear that lulled Malik into a dreamless sleep.

\--

Tazim learned to walk in the library, his arms outstretched between the shelves and his bare feet slapping dully across the stones. Malik wasted time crouching at the end of the aisles with his arm stretched out and his voice in a low drone of constant encouragement. 

He regretted the choice the very first time Tazim wiggled to his freedom in the dining hall and instead of being easy-enough-to-find on the floor eating the bits of fallen things, Malik found him out in the halls pulling at tapestries with greedy hands. “You need a bell,” he said.

Rana laughed at him when he told her about it. She made a string of bells and tied it to Tazim’s left ankle so that when he moved it made a pretty sound that prompted him to dance with lopsided enthusiasm. But he was easy enough to find when he wandered out of sight after that.

\--

It was important to him that nobody asked him about Altair, that nobody questioned how he was faring with the obviously-unwanted-presence of the man-who-fucked-him so close at hand. There had been many stares in the beginning and the constant maternal worry at his back whenever he left the easy solitude of the library. The summer heat had driven their worries away toward preparations for another long winter to come. The gardens were full of women with bowed backs and sweating faces working to grow the food that would be needed for so many hungry mouths.

The men who had fought in theoretical circles for so long had begun to send spies to the cities to root out what injustice they could find and report back. Rashid had been elected a leader and had implemented order where chaos had reigned before. The men who had signed themselves to the defense of peace-and-freedom were sent to train and grow strong out in the summer sun.

Life had gradually fallen back into the same routine as it had been before Maria-and-Altair came. When he did saw them, he saw the pinkness of their sunburnt skin, the dirt that clung to their clothes and the pariah-like isolation that kept them a great distance from him. Maria had many friends in the fields but not in the common rooms. 

Malik slept in peace, comforted by the knowledge that Altair did-not.

\--

Maria found him in the library, her face full of red-rage as she slapped him across the face with the full (impressive) brunt of her anger. There were tears on her face when he looked at her, and her voice was a writhing-thing full of hard spikes and broken scales. She said, “you cruel hearted, hateful _pig_! I regret the day I met you. I regret the days I spent at your side, I regret the _love_ I once felt for you.” She looked down toward the sound of bells when Tazim came around the end of a shelf to see what the commotion was about. Then she looked back at him, “you were a better man in a cage,” she snapped.

He slapped her and it knocked her to the side with a short shout of shock that was easily drowned in the sudden shriek of his son at his back. Tazim ran—blunt feet slapping the stone overlaid with the merry sound of bells as he went. 

Maria attacked him when she straightened, used the strength of her legs to launch the whole of her body at him and the blunt-bite of her nails to claw at his neck. He hit the shelf before he hit the ground and she followed after him with her words breaking to pieces as she called him every-foul-thing she could think. Malik held her away with one hand against her neck that slid in the wet sweat on her skin. 

Rauf was there in the next moment, prying Maria off him, pulling her up with a single thick arm around her chest as if she weighed nothing to him. She was kicking violently against the air and scratching at the arm that held her. 

“When they kill him will you be satisfied!” Maria screamed at him.

Malik lifted himself up on one arm, just far enough to see her. He had known Maria for years, listened to her talk about the life-she-wanted, watched her struggle with the one-she-had for the sake of the man-she-loved. He had sat in a cell, chained to the floor, and listened to her falling every-moment more desperately in love with Altair. “No!” he shouted at her. 

Oh-and-Maria went dead and cold at the word, stopped struggling against Rauf and set her feet back on the floor. Her face was still splotched with red rage but her eyes were empty-and-cool when she looked at him. Rauf took her and Fatin returned Tazim to him when she thought it was safe. 

Malik sat on the floor with bloody scratches on his neck and his son’s clinging to his chest with pale-anxious fingers. Fatin-said-nothing as she stood there by him for a moment, like there were many things she _wished_ to say and no strength to put _voice_ to them. 

\--

Rashid always-welcomed visitors in the spare office he had made out of a corner of the second library. He was regal in the robes the brotherhood agreed he should wear as he stood behind the desk and received the many men that came to him with troubles-and-questions. “Malik,” he said without looking up to see it was him. He hardly needed to when the bells tied to Tazim’s ankle announced him wherever he went. 

“Are the men hurting Altair?” Malik asked.

Rashid drew to his full height, set down the instrument he had been using on the map and put his hands behind his back. For a moment his face was a perfectly-blank stare as he picked the words he needed to answer such a _delicate_ question. “I have heard of injuries, yes. Nothing direct, nothing without cause—training is a dangerous thing at the very best of times. Altair has not complained and so I have no reason to believe there was anything malicious in the injuries he’s sustained.” And his head tilted a bit, giving the illusion that he moved closer to Malik when he did not. “Should I have a reason to believe otherwise?”

“I have no reason,” Malik said. (No reason but the scabbed scratches on his throat.)

Rashid nodded then, much the way a grandfather nodded at an idiot child. He bent forward as if to resume his work and then straightened again. There, he said, “if we are truly to say we fight for peace, and for freedom then our purpose must be _just_. We cannot afford to become the monsters we wish to slay or we will fail.” Then he returned to his work.

\--

That night, Malik took Tazim to Rana and left him there for safe-keeping. He went to his room and slept in an uncomfortable lonely-solitude that brought him nightmares of rattling-chains and the smell of vomit as a man held him down and called him a dog. The morning brought a bitter sense of finality the day before had not and he went to fetch something quick to eat before the other men crowded in and ate their fill. 

Malik took a dagger from the armor, tested it’s weight in his hand and liked the way it felt like enough to protect himself but not enough to weigh his single hand down. He went to the practice field with the knife tucked into a sheath at his waist and sat on the fence while he waited for the others to come. 

They came in a slow crawl—each complaining about the task they were set on. Rauf called insults to them as greetings as they stripped off their shirts and hung them across the fence. A few went to practice by the dummies that had begun to fall into disrepair but most of them stood at the fence and waited for sparring to begin. 

“Why are you here?” Rauf asked.

“Safety and peace,” Malik said, “these were the things you offered me when I came to Masyaf. I found them here, safety from the things I could not forgive and peace with the things I could not forget.”

“You have nothing to prove here,” Rauf said.

Altair came and the men straightened up and toyed with their wooden swords like unspoken threats. But Altair was tall-strong-and-brave and he stripped away his shirt to show the many bruises and scrapes set bright against his pale skin. He was thin—even for him—with the pronounced rise of his ribs diminishing the natural strength of his body. 

“I fight first,” Malik said, “I fight until I’m defeated.” He pushed himself off the fence, tugged the laces of his shirt loose and pulled it over his head. The long tails of the bandage on his left arm tickled against his side and he pulled them up to hold them in his teeth before he cut them short with the dagger. He stood in the middle of the ring and Rauf looked over at the unwilling men waiting for a fight. 

“This isn’t your fight, book-keeper,” one said. 

“I’ll fight him,” Altair said. He came over the fence and stood in the ring with him. There were no weapons in his hands when he took his place to start and set his body in a defensive posture. 

Malik held the dagger in his fist and turned to face Altair more fully. “This is the last fight you and I will have,” he said. He did not mean it as a threat or a warning but the most fragile offering of hope. 

“Very well,” Altair said.

They fought like the boys-they-had-been and like the men they had become. Altair attacked him without the reserve and insulting ‘respect’ that the men who circled the ring offered him. No, Altair fought him as an equal, as someone who had followed Malik across rooftops and crept up on men twice-sometimes-three-times their size. 

Malik cut him—twice on his arm, once as a glancing wound on his side. It deterred him only for a moment before he was back again. They went in circles, trading blows like long-unspoken things. Malik moved to push the dagger through Altair’s chest and Altair caught his wrist, knocked the dagger lose and caught it. He had the blade against Malik’s throat in an instant.

“Rapist,” Malik hissed at him. He knocked Altair’s arm away in the brief moment of shocked-hurt that word afforded him. The dagger fell out of his hand and Malik shoved him back and to the side so he had time to retrieve it.

Altair was _staring_ at him like he had no idea who he was. “That is a title we share, I think,” Altair said. “I had no more choice than you!” 

“But I have a knife,” Malik said, “and now you do not.”

When Altair attacked him it was the smooth-and-efficient attack of a seasoned killer: direct and remorseless. Every motion of his body was designed to exhaust-and-overcome Malik as he shoved him slowly but surely against the edge of the fence. Malik ducked away from an inevitable death sentence and fled back into the open space that offered him some chance of survival. 

Altair knocked him down and Malik lost his grip on the dagger as he fell, had no time to catch himself to soften the blow and no moment to catch his breath once he was in the dirt. Altair punched him and Malik hit him back with the stagnated force being held down allowed him. “That isn’t what happened!” Altair shouted at him as he dragged him up to hit him again. 

Malik kneed him hard in the side over yesterday’s leftover bruises and turned onto his belly to scuttle forward far enough to grab the knife. Altair threw dirt at his face that got caught in his tongue and kept his eyes shut even when he tried to open them. There was too much noise with the calls of the men all around him and the sound of his own body in motion to know where Altair had gone or from which direction he was going to strike. 

Malik turned the knife in his hand so the blade was against his forearm and he could use the dubiously clean back of his hand to scrub the dirt away. Altair was fighting Abbas across the ring, throwing punches and ducking out of the way of the broad side of wooden sword that seemed overly interested in crushing his ribs. Malik got to his feet and ran, threw the whole of his body against Abbas and knocked him into the fence.

“This is _my fight_ ,” he shouted at him.

Altair had a smear of blood on his face, a fresh curl of pink-and-blue marks on his chest where he’d been hit. There was no gratitude in his face at his unlikely rescue. “Is that what you told them I did?” he said. 

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Malik snapped back at him. Then they fell back into the fight without another moment’s pause. He drew blood twice more before Altair pried the dagger out of his hand and threw it out of the ring. 

Altair was ragged with exhaustion by then, dripping sweat and blood as he struggled to stay on his feet. Malik’s body was burning-for-exertion and there were fresh marks on his own chest and his arm from the blows he’d absorbed. Sweat was in his eyes mixing with the dirt on his face but he was not the same miserable wretch as Altair. He could have withstood him, could have kept them going in circles until Altair lost out of exhaustion alone. 

“I will tend your wounds,” Malik said, “follow me.” He moved to the fence, to the ring of men that were caught in silence as they watched Altair shuffle after him, moving with a constant wince. Malik picked up his shirt and accepted Altair’s when Rauf handed it to him.

\--

Malik cleaned Altair’s wounds with fresh well-water, ignoring the bitten little noises he made when the forming scabs broke apart and the blood ran fresh. He scrubbed the dirt until Altair’s skin prickled in gooseflesh from the cold of the water but was _clean_ again. Then he dumped a bucket of water over his filthy head and rubbed soap into his hair that turned to mud and took another two buckets of water to rinse out.

“I didn’t rape you,” Altair said when he was soaked and shivering even in the deep heat of the late summer days. “I don’t deserve much but I deserve that much.”

“I have found that I will do anything that is required to survive. You are not a rapist. I don’t consider you one, but I needed you to drop the knife.” He set the bucket at his feet and looked at Altair as he shivered in place and then motioned him toward the castle. “A few of these need bandages. Follow me.”

Altair followed after him leaving wet footprints in his wake up and around to Malik’s room and the uncomfortable privacy it offered them. By the time they reached it Altair was shivering from his shoulders to his knees and his pants had become all but glued against his skin. 

Malik offered him a fresh pair and pulled the bandages he kept for his arm out under the pretense of affording Altair the small respect of not watching him undress. By the time he turned around again Altair was dressed in dry pants and spreading his fingers across the length of the short wounds Malik had given him. “Why did you let them hurt you?” Malik asked.

“’Let’ is a strong word to use when I was not given a choice,” Altair said. 

“Hold this,” Malik said. He started wrapping the length of bandages around the wound on Altair’s right arm. It was the deepest of the several shallow cuts, possibly the only one that really required treatment. They worked in silence, Altair clumsily offering his assistance to tie and cut the bandage when they finished. Then Malik sat back on his knees and took stock of his work. “Tonight, join me for dinner. And in the morning for breakfast. You and I were brothers once, whatever mistakes we have made, we could be brothers again.”

Altair nodded.

\--

There was no overwhelming change. Tazim tolerated the presence of newcomers with the same grace Maria tolerated Malik’s. They sat in silence as they ate for many days until Altair told him about the offer he was given to be one of the first so-called Assassins sent out to the cities. There was a particularly foul member of council in Acre that had taken to selling Omegas to men known to harm them and reaping the monetary benefit while the population sagged. 

“It is as good a place to start as any,” Malik said.

“They are only sending you because they do not think you’ll return,” Maria said. “We will sit in victory when you prove them wrong.” 

Altair was sent out in the first days of fall, and returned within two weeks bearing a bloody feather as proof. He offered it to Rashid amid a rush of celebration and the hope his unremarkable victory offered the others. Rashid clapped his hand on Altair’s shoulder and called him remarkable.

\--

So it went, Altair was sent to the cities to defeat the enemies the spies found among men. Others were trained in his image: taught to be swift, strong and fearless as they scaled the walls of the castle. 

Altair gave them the weapon he had made to fit on his wrist and they copied it again-and-again until every assassin sent to the cities bore the proof of his allegiance to the brotherhood as a weapon strapped to his arm. Maria was allowed to leave the gardens to join training and was sent away on missions.

\--

Tazim had grown tall in three years, had learned to talk and to recognize a variety of words on sight. His downy-brown hair had never darkened but often grew lighter in the bright sunshine he was so fond of. Most of his time was spent in the library save for the time when Altair returned and was given enough time to take the boy out into the world beyond. 

Tazim called him by his name, never father, but he knew what Altair was even if he did not say as much.

Maria would take him out as well. Tazim came back exhausted and stinking of horses and dirt when he returned from her. Maria-was-Mama to the little boy, often adored and rarely disliked. She had balked at the name if only because she was no child’s mother but Tazim had not given an inch in the many years since he first named her such.

“Mother,” Tazim always called him, “Mother, are we nearly finished? Mother, can’t we go outside? Mother.”

"Soon," Malik said. (Always said.) And Tazim would lay himself out with a groan before he relented in silence and waited for his chance at freedom from the library.


End file.
